Friday, September 12, 2008

Teasing

I was apparently born with a giant sign on my head that says "tease me." I am physically unthreatening and blush easily. This makes it hard to maintain my authority. Here's an example of what I mean:

I'd been working with one drill rig for several months, so we knew each other well by that point. The driller had two helpers who were my age (early 20s at this point). I should say that one of the helpers was built like an ox and the other spent his day using drill rods as dumbells. One day, the driller took off to get supplies or something and we were waiting around - probably we were waiting for the backfill to settle around a well before finishing installation, or we were waiting for the concrete to set.

At some point, the conversation moved around to the 100-pound bag of concrete I was sitting on. Helper 1 said something about me weighing less than the concrete.

Me: Not really.
Helper 1: You can't weigh more than 90 pounds.
Me: I assure you, I do not weigh anything close to 90 pounds.
Helper 2: My girlfriend is your size and she weighs 90 pounds.
Me (getting a little irritated): Look, a lot of women lie about their weight. I don't have a problem with how much I weigh, and it's more than 100 pounds.
Helper 1: There is no way you weigh more than 90 pounds soaking wet.
Me (now riled up): You know what? You don't know squat about womens' weights. In fact, I weigh 120 pounds! (thus becoming the only modern female to ever fudge her weight up a couple pounds).
Helper 1: That's horseshit.
Me (insulted): Well, then, it must be that I weigh so much because I've got more muscles.
Helpers 1 and 2: AH HA HA HA!

The rest of the week, my name was "muscles." All I heard was, "hey, 'muscles', why don't you pick up that (object weighing at least 200 pounds) and bring it over?...'muscles', why don't you break the drill rods for us?"

Note to self: getting goaded into an argument about my weight does not help me project an aura of authority.

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